The reason why Wan Lei wants to close the province and move people is that in addition to maintaining the soil and water of the Loess Plateau, he also has another purpose, which is to move the population eastward and focus development on the North China Plain and Northeast Plains. The eastward strategy There is another more important motivation, which is to prepare for the march to the ocean.
After the invention of the ship, the age of great navigation came. If Chinese civilization wanted to have a bright future, it could not stick to the three-thirds of an acre of land on the Loess Plateau. It must have the courage to march into the ocean to occupy the best arable land in the world and breed more. population, create a more glorious global civilization system, and make all races in the world submit to the glory of Chinese civilization.
It was precisely out of his ambition to conquer the world that Wan Lei tried his best to persuade the officials and gentry in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces to let them do ideological work for the local people on the great migration. And if one person has two, then if this population migration succeeds , it will not be difficult to move the population overseas in the future.
The two provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi have a population of over six million, and as many as three million people need to be relocated this time. This big project cannot be completed at once. Wan Lei also knows that rushing is futile, so he first A pilot project was carried out in the Jinghe River Basin, where water and soil erosion is the most serious, to relocate more than 400,000 people in that area to the Guanzhong Plain area.
The Guanzhong Plain, also known as the Weihe Plain, is distributed from east to west along the Weihe River. It is about 300 kilometers long and ranges from 100 kilometers to dozens of kilometers wide. It covers an area of about 30,000 square kilometers. When converted into city acres, it is 4,000 square kilometers. Five million acres. These lands are fertile soil with good irrigation. As long as they are developed properly, they can be enough to feed a population of five million. The Guanzhong Plain area already has a population of about two million, and it doesn't matter if it is filled with another one or two million people.
Wan Lei had already convinced the local officials and gentry in advance. Under the instigation of the officials and gentry, the preliminary publicity and preparation work for the great relocation was progressing smoothly. After all, the land in northern Shaanxi was barren and the people were mostly poor. They lived in earthen kilns and slept in There is nothing hard to abandon with a Tukang and four walls, so when they heard that the one who took the lead in relocation was given a stone of food, they all responded. After all, eating is the king.
However, no matter how poor a place is, there are still wealthy households. The ideological work of the big landowners who live in luxurious houses is the most difficult because they have houses and land. Now they are asked to give up everything and go to make a living elsewhere. Of course they are not happy. However, Wan Lei doesn't force them, because sooner or later they will understand what it means to act with one's will and not to overestimate one's ability.
You know, it doesn’t mean that you can be called a landlord if you have hundreds or even thousands of acres of land. The key is that someone has to rent your land to plant it, so that you can receive the land rent and live a life of getting something for nothing. Otherwise, the landowner and his family can’t be called a landlord. A dozen or so people have to cultivate hundreds or even thousands of acres of land, and sooner or later the whole family will die from overwork.
And after the local people have moved away, no matter how much land the landlords have, it will be worthless, because the government will soon introduce a "national policy" of closing mountains and planting trees and returning farmland to forests. The land of these landlords will be waiting for them. Let them be taxed. If Wan Lei is happy, maybe he can give them a few symbolic levy fees. If Wan Lei is not happy, he will directly label them as negative examples of the rich and unkind, and directly ruin their reputation. Who makes them unwilling to cooperate with the government? As for cooperation, this is called self-inflicted trouble.
Of course, there are only a few stubborn landowners and old wealthy people. Most of the rich and wealthy squires are still very smart. They can achieve their current wealth mostly due to years of hard work. They also know that the poor should not fight with the rich, and the rich should not fight with the officials. Therefore, as soon as the relocation order was issued, more than a dozen wealthy families actively responded to the call, and some even made a special trip to Xi'an to meet Wan Lei and express their willingness to donate money.
Wan Lei liked this kind of discerning people very much. Although he knew they were speculating, he still reciprocated the favor and gave these families one or two places to enter the School of Administration of Peking University with a stroke of his pen. The guy was immediately overjoyed and immediately donated money to the school.
The reason why these admission quotas are attractive to the rich is because Peking University is the best school in Peiping, and the School of Administration is a base for training reserve officials. As long as you can graduate from the high school, you can be an official, big or small. .
In addition to the School of Administration, Peking University also has branches such as the School of Science, the School of Engineering, the School of Business, and the School of Liberal Arts. Wan Lei not only serves as the honorary president, but also gives lectures in various colleges when he has time. For this reason, Peking University The children of wealthy families in the province and the best talents from all over the country are rushing to study there.
If you can go there to study, you can get to know many future stars. Even if you don't get a chance to join politics in the future, the contacts you have accumulated will be enough for them to integrate into the upper class society. An admission quota can be said to be a passport to join the upper class society. , how can we not make people flock to it.
Of course, the management of Peking University is strict. If you want to enroll, you must first take the entrance exam. Although this kind of special admissions has preferential policies, you must at least be literate, and you must also take one to two years of preparatory courses to catch up on the basic knowledge. Wan Lei must declare this to these landlords and rich men in advance and ask them not to send their family dandies to avoid wasting this precious quota.
Wan Lei was engaged in a large-scale "study donation" in Xi'an. In one month, he collected 400,000 shi of grain and 50,000 taels of silver. Naturally, this amount of grain and silver was not enough for a large-scale relocation. He also had to have an additional 400,000 silver dollars shipped from Peking. As special funds for relocation.
Silver dollars are also good luck. The 400,000 silver dollars are just a few cash trucks. It is difficult to transport grain because of the inconvenience of transportation. When transporting grain from Peiping to Xi'an, it is good to have five trucks left out of ten trucks of grain when it arrives, so ten thousand Lei would rather use silver dollars to buy grain locally than transport it here.
Fortunately, silver dollars are hard currency. One silver dollar can buy many high-quality goods trafficked from Peiping. Therefore, the local people in Xi'an are willing to sell their stored grain in exchange for silver dollars. This has also caused the value of silver dollars to soar. Now one silver dollar can buy three stones of grain. , which also indirectly led to the depreciation of unofficial currencies such as Yin Liang and Hongwu Tongbao.
You must know that the original areas of the Ming Dynasty mainly circulated copper coins such as Hongwu Tongbao and broken silver of poor quality. Due to the inconsistency of currency, this seriously affected the circulation of currency. Although there are many broken silver and Hongwu Tongbao There are shortcomings, but this is also the hard-earned money of the people. It does not mean that it should be abolished and not used.
In fact, Wan Lei had long expected that there would be currency circulation problems, and was also working on formulating a national monetary policy. The best way is to exchange within a limited time, but if a unified monetary policy is to be adopted nationwide, not only must there be a sufficient amount of silver dollars For exchange with copper coins, exchange agencies must be established in various places to facilitate people's exchange.
Because there are too many things to prepare in advance, the policy of exchanging old currency for new currency cannot be implemented for the time being. Moreover, Wan Lei is not only focusing on unifying the currency, but also wants to take this opportunity to establish a financial system. To put it simply, it is to establish a universal deposit and exchange system. banking system.
Of course, the establishment of a bank cannot be said to be successful. First, the bank must have enough principal to cope with various risks; secondly, the bank must have high enough credibility, and only with credibility can it have deposits; thirdly, The bank must have enough branches, at least one office in each province, to facilitate merchants' deposits and withdrawals; finally, the bank must have enough financial talents to operate it, and must establish a complete set of procedures and security systems. To ensure the safety of deposits.
Since there are too many problems in establishing a bank, Wan Lei has been planning. He plans to wait until the founding of the country next year to concentrate on unifying the currency and establishing a bank. Now he is focusing on the large-scale population relocation. This is a very important thing.
As the saying goes, things have priorities. If we don't take advantage of the small population now and the people have just experienced the war and their lives are not yet stable to allocate the population, then when the people's lives have stabilized, their lives have improved, and their family fortunes have grown, we will not want to make the Loess Plateau any more. It will be very difficult to relocate these millions of people, and the cost will be even greater.
In order to carry out population allocation, Wan Lei was stationed in the city of Xi'an and took command. In early July, the first batch of people from the Jinghe River Basin finally arrived outside Xi'an. Wan Lei had already had people move the official fields that originally belonged to the Ming Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty. The army's farmland, the King of Qin's fiefdom, and other ownerless lands were all set aside and distributed uniformly to the relocated people. Each person could get at least five acres. Even some ownerless houses were divided, and each person was given one stone of food as food. Ration, everyone was happy for a while.
Seeing the benefits available, the people in the prefectures and counties in the relocation area were also moved. At the end of June, the population in the Jinghe River Basin was basically completed, and the relocation operation in the entire northern Shaanxi region was officially launched. In addition to moving to the Guanzhong Plain, In addition to the 500,000 people who were relocated, all the remaining people migrated north, some to fill in the Hetao area, and some to cross the Yellow River and enter the Mongolian Plateau to set up pastures and work as herdsmen. Only a few selected people stayed and worked as tree planters and forest rangers.
Similar to the dispersed resettlement in Shaanxi, some of the immigrants in Shanxi were transported to Liaodong, while others were transported to Shandong. Only a few people were left to take charge of the land conversion project. Of course, Wan Lei also knew that Shanxi’s underground There are many coal mines hidden there, but there is no shortage of coal in various places now, so there are no plans to develop it yet. After all, Shanxi is mostly mountainous and transportation is really inconvenient.
Of course, Wan Lei's sealing off most of Shaanxi and Shanxi does not mean that this area will become a breeding ground for rogue bandits. Especially in western Shaanxi, the Peking Army still has a large number of troops assembled to prevent enemies from the west and north from invading. They will also organize A forest guard army was set up to regularly patrol the forest area, prohibiting foreigners from entering it, and preventing citizens from entering it for reclamation.
In short, Wan Lei wants to treat the Loess Plateau as a nature reserve, plant trees and grass to nourish the water and soil, and limit logging and grazing, in order to establish an improving ecosystem in the shortest possible time and curb water and soil erosion. It is expected that within a few decades, the Yellow River will become clear and the North China Plain will no longer be affected by floods and droughts.